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Valise of Memories

In memory of Margaret Maher, housemaid and confidante of Emily Dickinson

Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 11:21

Doireann Ní Ghríofa

My mistress filled my valise with her vowels - the battered trunk that journeyed with me from the shadow of Slievenamon. Now she is dead. She made me promise to feed them to flames. I cannot yet bring myself to do the deed.

I try to dismiss their wild whispers but they bang their fists against the walls and stamp their syllables. They long to live in the mouths and minds of strangers. I am tormented by the quarrel between the promise to my mistress and the bequest she left behind.

The soft grey wool of my mind is marked by dropped stitches. All day, I mumble and fumble, spill soup on my apron, catch my fingers in the mangle. Though I keep my chest clasped shut, I cannot quieten their pleading.

Their stifled screams shake me from sleep. I stumble to the chest, raise the lid, scratch a match. The flame stares at her scribbled papers. Pinching the spark between finger and thumb, I quench it and lift the papers from darkness, one by one.

Doireann Ní Ghríofa is a bilingual poet based in Cork. Her Irish language collections Résheoid and Dúlasair are both published by Coiscéim, and a bilingual chapbook, A Hummingbird, Your Heart, is available free to download from Smithereens Press.